'You Don’t Do It for Fun': Joey Logano Reveals Mentality Behind Racing at the Top Level of NASCAR

In a sense, Joey Logano is somewhat of a walking — make that driving — contradiction. While the Connecticut native enjoys NASCAR racing and has said it’s fun countless times, there’s a fine line between fun and the serious business of winning.

And winning is something Logano is all about. He’s earned 37 wins including Texas last month, and 169 top-fives and 291 top 10 finishes in 593 career starts in the Cup Series. And let’s not forget his three Cup championships: 2018, 2022 and 2024, the most of any active driver in the series.

While winning is fun, there’s an all-business mindset that Logano goes into every race with, putting the fun aside and using all of his skills and talent and business-like demeanor to reach victory lane. He was asked about that distinction between fun and business last weekend at Nashville Superspeedway.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Logano told Frontstretch.com. “I like cars, but when you get to this level, you don’t do it for fun because there’s a lot on the line. Do I want to go racing for fun? Sure, and when I want to do that I’ll jump in a go-kart and I’ll go do that for fun with my buddies.

“But when you get to this level and you’re racing for people’s bonuses, there’s a lot more on the line than doing this type of stuff for fun. So, no, I don’t do it for fun, I don’t look to have fun.

“I’m not disappointed if I didn’t have fun today. That’s not the expectation. The expectation is to try to win and do that and then we’ll have fun, if that’s the case. That’s how I’ll view it.”

As much as he likes winning, there’s also something Logano absolutely hates

Why is Logano so determined to win? The reason is both simple and succinct.

“I hate losing,” Logano said recently to Fox61 in his native Connecticut. “I have a fairly short memory when it comes to success. If you win, that’s great.

“But if I have a couple of bad weeks after that, I’ll forget about that win pretty quickly. I just want to get back to the winning ways.” And winning is what drives Logano in everything he does.

“If I’m going to do something, I’m going to do it to win,” he added. “It’s really the only reason to do it. I want to win really badly. I just don’t want to lose more than anything.”

The three Cup Series titles under his belt suggest that Logano’s ‘all work and no play’ approach more than proves its worth.